The Wending Road of a Wandering Jewitch

[Seeky]

Part 1: History

If I'm going to tell the story of my spiritual beliefs, I need to tell the stories of my ancestors, as well. My grandfather, Harry Posmantier, and his wife, Ruth, both were lucky and brave enough to survive the Holocaust, despite both being Polish Jews in Poland at the time. They survived because they were useful--he was a plumber and handyman around the camps. She was a nurse.

They survived and moved to America and eventually had a son, David.

Then, fourteen years later, they had an oops!, my mother, Beth.

Now, my mother was never a very good "obey and do as your told" Jewish daughter. She got kicked out of Hebrew School at age 8 for asking too many questions. This is why, when she was searching for houses of worship for my brother and I before my Bat Mitzvah, she looked for Reform synagogues that welcomed questions.

My father was always a bit...off...when it came to religion. He was raised in Texas, and grew up as the boy playing with toads in the back of the sanctuary. As he grew older, he became and art student, and hung out with many of the (his words) "folks who believed in things other than the whitebeard upstairs". For my mother's sake, though, after he married her, he converted to Judiasm and celebrated Bar Mitzvah at the age of 24, under Rabbi Shimon Goldstein. Rabbi Goldstein told my father that his job was "to raise kids who're better Jews than you are." While he was studying for Bar Mitzvah, my dad would hum Torah prayers over me as a lullaby. And I plan to do the same to my kids--the melody is so soothing. But Dad, he came to call himself a "paganistic Rasta-Jew".

So, here I am, growing up in this house, with a mother who allows questions, and a father who's a Jew with a wide-open mind. The only thing my parents had issues with was that my father didn't like Tarot cards due to personal past experiences, and once I showed interest in them, I was to close my door while doing readings, and when not reading, I had to keep them in a box behind closed doors.

My mother sent me to both a nature camp and a Jewish summer camp as a child, the latter to help me prepare for Bat Mitzvah. It helped me learn prayers and rituals, and things that I couldn't give up under any circumstance. But by the time I was 13, I was already reading Ravenwolf, and noticing the distinct ritual significance of prayers like Shalom Aleichem (the Allen Soberman version of the audio's better, but I wanted the translation) and seeing song circles for Shabbat as a tool for raising power.

I've grown, over the years. I'm 20 now, a Seaman Apprentice in the US Navy, which is wrought with rituals of its own. Wearing a cover (hat) at all times outdoors, respecting the quarterdeck (entryway) of a ship or a building as ceremonial space. Frocking ceremonies. But it's hard for a Jewitch to find her way, when she can't exactly be sure the Jewish chaplain'd understand her viewpoint.

So, here I am.  

[Seeky]

Part 2: Beliefs

I suppose one of the strongest beliefs I have, and what I base a lot of my personal practice on, could be summed up by a prayer/song we learned at Jewish summer camp. "Baruch atah Adonai, elohainu melech ha'Olam, she'natan lanu hizdamnut l'takein et ha'Olam." Praised be you god...for giving us this opportunity to heal/repair the world.

That's right, the world is ill/broken/(my personal favorite) incomplete. We as humanity are given the opportunity to do our part in creation by making this world better. To make this world into what it should be. The only reason Earth isn't heaven is that we haven't made the heaven we want on earth yet. We have the tools, and there are places where pieces have been made, but the work is not yet done.

This means, yes, I do firmly believe in free will. I also believe in Fate, due to a few personal experiences that I can outline if there is interest expressed. There are moments (usually not longer than a minute or two), when you feel the puppet hand in your back, and the voice that is not your own speaking, forcing the world to go the way it will. But then, it fades, and you are free as an individual to deal with what's just been done, and every time it's happened in my experience, the reason has been made clear within a month or so.

Do I believe in gods and goddesses? Heh, here's an interesting question. I'm a very soft polytheist. I believe that all gods are faces of the God and the Goddess, with the Goddess in her purest state being the Shechinah, the female Presence of the Lord. At the same time, there will be days when I'll be doing something, and I will address a certain aspect of God, other than Adonai, because he's a distant lordly sort, and sometimes I just want to scream bloody vengance.

Or, sometimes I feel other aspects calling to me. 2008, Lammas Eve, I was a counselor at a nature camp. All the boys' cabins were on trips, so it was girls' night in. We celebrated the night as a night of filth and cleansings. Mudbaths followed by a dip in the lake with sand exfoliations. A burning of "I can'ts" and "I hates", and then oatmeal face masks. Now, I'd been reading up on gods for a roleplaying game, and as this night unfolded, I found myself thinking of, and later thanking Tlazoteotl for the sense of ceremony and holiness I felt in the air. Whereas a typical Jew might have seen that as an extension of the mikvah, ritual bath.